Robert Dowling

Books

A Place in Time: The Life and Work of Sam Shepard [Working Title]. New York: Scribner (forthcoming).

Conversations with Sam Shepard. Co-edited with Jackson R. Bryer and Mary C. Hartig. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2021.

Eugene O’Neill: A Life in Four Acts. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2014; paperback, 2016; trans. Shiyan Xu. Nanjing University Press: Nanjing, China, 2018. (Shiyan Xu was the winner of the highly competitive Writers Association of Jiangsu Province’s Purple Mountain Prize for Literary Translation and third prize for the Government of Jiangsu Province.)

Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist (2014).
Publishers Weekly “Top Ten Pick” for Literary Biographies, Essays & Criticism (Fall 2014).

Reviewed in America Magazine, American Theatre, Australian Book Review [Australia], Bookforum, Booklist, Choice, Counterpunch, The Eugene O’Neill Review, The Guardian [UK, “On My Radar”], The Hopkins Review, Intermission Talk, Irish Examiner [Ireland], The Irish Times [Ireland], The Irish Voice, The Key Reporter [Phi Beta Kappa Society], Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, Literary Review [UK], London Review of Books, Modern Drama, The New York Times [“By the Book”], The Oakland Journal, Open Letters Monthly, Publishers Weekly (starred review), The Spectator [UK], The Sunday Times [London], Theatre History Studies, Theatre Library Association, The Times [London], The Times Literary Supplement [UK], The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Weekly Standard.

Eugene O’Neill: The Contemporary Reviews. Co-edited with Jackson R. Bryer. American Critical Archives series. New York and Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Reviewed in (to date) The Eugene O’Neill Review, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, and Theatre History Studies.

Eugene O’Neill and His Early Contemporaries: Bohemians, Radicals, Progressives, and the Avant Garde. Coedited with Eileen Herrmann. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland Publishers, 2011.
Reviewed in The Eugene O’Neill Review, The [San Francisco] Examiner, and Theatre Survey.

Critical Companion to Eugene O’Neill: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work. 2 vols. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 2009. Reviewed in American Reference Books Annual, Booklist, Choice, The Eugene O’Neill Review, Irish American Writers and Artists (online).

Slumming in New York: From the Waterfront to Mythic Harlem. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2007; paperback, 2008. Reviewed in American Historical Review, American Literature, American Literary History, American Literary Scholarship, American Literary Realism, American Studies, Choice, Goodreads.com, Journal of American Culture, Modern Fiction Studies, Modern Philology, Stephen Crane Studies, and Studies in American Naturalism.

Articles and Selected Writings

“James Light’s ‘The Parade of Masks’: Eugene O’Neill as Would-Be Novelist.” The Eugene O’Neill Review 37:3 (Winter 2020).

“Eugene O’Neill: A Life in Four Acts: The China Tour, April 2018.” The Eugene O’Neill Newsletter (Fall 2018): 8.

“‘Told in Context’: Dorothy Day’s Previously Unpublished Reminiscence of Eugene O’Neill.” Edited with an Introduction. The Eugene O’Neill Review 37:3 (Fall 2017): 1-12.

Program note for the Irish Repertory Theatre’s The Emperor Jones (New York City). Spring Season 2017.

“Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape: A Close Encounter with the Super-Natural.” Program note for the Old Vic’s production of O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape (The Park Avenue Armory, NYC). Spring Season 2017.

“1916: O’Neill’s Debut.” With Pulitzer-Prize-winning playwright David Auburn. The Dramatist: The Journal of the Dramatists Guild of America. 19:1 (September/October 2016): 40-43.

“A New Insight into Edmund Tyrone by Way of the Second Girl.” The Eugene O’Neill Review 37:2 (2016): 172-174.

“The Maid behind the Mahem: An Interview with Long Day’s Journey Into Night’s Colby Minifie.” Irish America (June/July 2016).

“‘The Fact that I’m Irish’: Eugene O’Neill, U.S. Playwright and Irish Revolutionary.” The Irish Times 27 April 2016.

Program note for the Court Theatre’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Chicago). Spring Season 2016.

“100 Years after the Discovery of Eugene O’Neill, Hughie and Long Day’s Journey Into Night Open on Broadway.” Yale Books Unbound 3 February 2016.

“Packed to the Doors with Astonishment.” Program note for The Hairy Ape. Old Vic Theatre, London, UK (Fall Season, 2015).

“‘The Call of the Underworld’: Teaching Class, History, and Literary Naturalism in Jack London’s ‘South of the Slot.’” Approaches to Teaching the Works of Jack London. New York: MLA, 2015: 85-93.

“Return to Monte Cristo: An Uncovered Photograph of the O’Neills on Tour, 1912.” The Eugene O’Neill Review 35:3 (2014): 80-85.

“Was the Unabomber a Fan of Eugene O’Neill?” The Daily Beast 6 November 2014.

“Eugene O’Neill at the Ballot Box.” The Huffington Post 4 November 2014 (Election Day).

“Jimmy Tomorrow Revisited: New Sources for The Iceman Cometh.” The Eugene O’Neill Review 34:3 (2014): 94-106.

“Eugene O’Neill’s Exorcism: The Lost Prequel to Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” The Eugene O’Neill Review 34:1 (2013): 1-12. Rpt in Journal of the Central Academy of Drama (Trans. by Shiyan Xu, China, 2018).

“Kathleen O’Neill v. Eugene O’Neill: Proceedings of the New York Supreme Court at White Plains, June 10, 1912.” Edited with an Introduction. The Eugene O’Neill Review 34:1 (2013): 13-27.

 “Sad Endings and Negative Heroes: The Naturalist Tradition in American Drama.” The Oxford Handbook to American Literary Naturalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011: 427-444.

“O’Neill in Adaptation.” Eugene O’Neill Society Newsletter (Winter 2011).

“A Real Lady: Kathryne Albertoni, R.N.” Eugene O’Neill Society Newsletter (Spring 2011). [A remembrance of my interview with Eugene O’Neill’s nurse, at 100-years old, in October, 2010.]

“‘Why O’Neill?’” In “Celtic Twilight: 21st-Century Irish Americans on Eugene O’Neill.” Drunken Boat #12 < http://www.drunkenboat.com/db12/04one/dowling/index.php> (September 2010).

“Celtic Twilight: 21st-Century Irish-Americans on Eugene O’Neill.” Edited with an Introduction. Drunken Boat  #12 < http://www.drunkenboat.com/db12/> (September 2010).

 “Riders of the Imagination: George Monteiro on Stephen Crane Studies.” Studies in American Naturalism 5.1 (Summer 2010; includes exclusive interview with Monteiro): 37-50.

“A Cold Case File Reopened: Was [Stephen] Crane’s Maggie Murdered or a Suicide?” With Donald Pizer. American Literary Realism 42:1 (Fall 2009): 36-53.

 “‘Denial Without End’: Benjamin De Casseres’ Parody of Eugene O’Neill’s Days Without End.” Edited with an Introduction. The Eugene O’Neill Review 30 (2008): 145-159.

 “‘Do Not Weep, Maiden’: Nellie Crouse and Stephen Crane’s [poem] ‘War is Kind.’” Stephen Crane Studies (Spring 2008): 15-20.

“‘The Screenews of War’: A Previously Unpublished Short Story by Eugene O’Neill.” Edited with an Intro. Resources for American Literary Study Vol 31. New York: AMS Press, Inc. (Fall 2007): 169-98. “On Eugene O’Neill’s ‘Philosophical Anarchism.’” The Eugene O’Neill Review 29 (Spring 2007): 50-72.

“The Case for George’s Mother.” Stephen Crane Studies 15.2 (Fall 2006): 18-37.  

“A Marginal Man in Black Bohemia: James Weldon Johnson in the New York Tenderloin.” Post‑Bellum, Pre‑Harlem: The Achievement of African‑American Writers, Artists, and Thinkers, 1880‑1914. Eds. Caroline Gebhard and Barbara McCaskill. New York: New York University Press, 2006: 216-246.

“Ethnic Realism.” A Companion to American Fiction, 1865-1914. Eds. Robert Paul Lamb and G. R. Thompson. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2005: 356-376.

“‘Bartleby, the Scrivener.’” The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. Vol. 3. Ed. Jay Parini. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004: 87-91.

 “Stephen Crane and the Transformation of the Bowery.” Twisted from the Ordinary: Essays on American Literary Naturalism. Ed. Mary E. Papke. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2003: 45-62.

Book and Performance Reviews

Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Flock Theatre. Monte Cristo Cottage; New London CT. April 1-May 14. The Eugene O’Neill Review 37:3 (2017).

“Great ‘Experiations’: ‘Beyond Success: Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neill.’” Tennessee Williams Theater Festival, Provincetown, MA, Sept. 22-25. Eugene O’Neill Society Newsletter (Fall 2016): 15-16.

Exorcism: A Play in One Act. By Eugene O’Neill. 1919. Foreword by Edward Albee and Introduction by Louise Bernard. With a Typescript Facsimile. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2012. The Eugene O’Neill Review 33:31 (2012).

American Hungers: The Problem of Poverty in U.S. Literature, 1840-1945, by Gavin Jones. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. Modern Philology 109:4 (May 2012): E000.

Stephen Crane: The Contemporary Reviews, edited by George Monteiro. American Critical Archives 17. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge U. Press, 2009. American Literary Realism 44:3 (Spring 2012): 278-280.

Hotel de Dream: A New York Novel, by Edmund White. New York: Ecco/HarperCollins Publishers, 2007. Studies in American Naturalism (Summer 2008): 188-192.

Student Companion to Stephen Crane, by Paul Sorrentino. Garden City, NY: Greenwood Press, 2007. Stephen Crane Studies 16.1 (Fall 2007): 27-29.

Marco Millions (based on lies). Waterwell, The Lion at Theatre Row, 410 W. 42nd Street, New York City. August 4-26, 2006. The Eugene O’Neill Review 29 (Spring 2007): 83-87.

Playing the Races: Ethnic Charicature and American Literary Realism, by Henry B. Wonham. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. MELUS: The Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States 30.4 (Summer 2006): 269-271.

Theodore Dreiser: Interviews, Frederick E. Rusch and Donald Pizer, eds. University of Illinois Press, 2004. American Literary Realism (Fall 2005): 186-188.

Charles W. Chesnutt and the Fictions of Race, by Dean McWilliams. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2002. MELUS 28.2 (Summer 2003): 241-244.

Edith and Winnifred Eaton: Chinatown Missions and Japanese Romances, by Dominika Ferens. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002. MELUS 28.4 (Winter 2003): 234-237.

Biographical Essays

“Eugene O’Neill.” American Writers, Vol.18. Ed. Jay Parini. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale. [Forthcoming]

“Hutchins Hapgood.” American Writers, Vol. 17. Ed. Jay Parini. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2007: 95-108.

“Paul Laurence Dunbar,” “James Weldon Johnson,” and “Carl Van Vechten.” The Encyclopedia of African American Literature. Ed. Wilfred D. Samuels. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 2006.

“Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen,” “Abraham Cahan,” “María Christina Mena Chambers,” “Anna Julia Cooper,” “Theodore Dreiser,” “Finley Peter Dunne,” “Edith Maude Eaton/Sui Sin Far,” “Winnifred Eaton/Onoto Watanna,” “James T. Farrell,” “Sara Winnemucca,” and “Zitkala-Ša.” The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Multiethnic American Literature. Ed. Emmanuel S. Nelson. Westport, C.T.: Greenwood Press, 2005.

“Hutchins Hapgood.” The Dictionary of Literary Biography: American Radical and Reform Writers. Ed. Steven Rosendale. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2004: 192-199.

“Charles W. Chesnutt,” “John Dos Passos,” “Hutchins Hapgood,” “O. Henry,” “Annie Proulx” (includes exclusive interview with Proulx), and “Carl Sandburg.” The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. Ed. Jay Parini. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Reprints

“Eugene O’Neill’s Exorcism: The Lost Prequel to Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” Journal of the Central Academy of Drama. Trans. Shiyan Xu (China, 2018).

“The Hairy Ape in Context.” Program note for The Hairy Ape. Old Vic Theatre, London, UK. Yale Books Unbound. October 21, 2015. <http://blog.yupnet.org/?p=19717&shareadraft=baba19717_5626a0eb4c326>

“A Real Lady: Kathryne Albertoni, R.N.” Eugene O’Neill Society Newsletter (Fall 2013). [A remembrance of my interview with Eugene O’Neill’s nurse, at 100-years old, in October, 2010. She died in 2013.]

“Riders of the Imagination: George Monteiro on Stephen Crane Studies.” Rpt. in Comunidades (Azorean blog) Quinta, 28 de Julho de 2011. <http://ww1.rtp.pt/icmblogs/rtp/comunidades/index.php> (7/28/11).

“The Straw Is Sequel to Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” Rpt. from Critical Companion to Eugene O’Neill in Eugene O’Neill Foundation Newsletter (Winter 2011): 3.

“On Eugene O’Neill’s ‘Philosophical Anarchism.’” Rpt. in Eugene O’Neill and His Early Contemporaries: Bohemians, Radicals, Progressives, and the Avant Garde. Coedited with Eileen Herrmann. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland Publishers.

“Slumming: Morality and Space in New York City from ‘City Mysteries’ to the Harlem Renaissance.” 2001. Diss. excerpt rpt. in Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives. 1890. Ed. Hasia R. Diner. New York: Norton Critical Edition, 2009: 523-525.

“‘Under the Bridge and Beyond’: Helen Campbell on the East Side Waterfront.” Excerpt rpt. from Slumming in New York: From the Waterfront to Mythic Harlem in Gotham History Blotter. Gotham Center for New York City History <http://www.gothamcenter.org/features/blotter/index.shtml> (Summer 2008).

“Stephen Crane and the Transformation of the Bowery.” Stephen Crane: Bloom’s Modern Critical Views (Updated edition). Edited and Intro. by Harold Bloom. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2007: 149-166.

Conference Presentations

“Eugene O’Neill Today: Pedagogy, Dramaturgy, and Transnationality.” Panelist for the Eugene O’Neill Society. American Literature Association. San Francisco, CA (May 2018).

“Eugene O’Neill in Chinese Translation.” Keynote Speaker. The 11th Annual Symposium of the Shandong Provincial Foreign Literature Association. Shandong Normal University; Jinan, China. April 23, 2018.

“How O’Neill’s Irishness ‘Translates’ for the Chinese.” (With Chinese translator Shiyan Xu.) The Tenth International Conference on Eugene O’Neill, Galway, Ireland (July 2017).

“‘The Fact that I’m Irish’: Eugene O’Neill, U.S. Playwright and Irish Revolutionary.” Kennedy Summer School: A Festival of Irish-American History, Culture, and Politics. New Ross, Ireland. Sept. 8 2016.

“A New Insight into Edmund Tyrone by Way of the Second Girl.” Panelist for Eugene O’Neill Society panel (with playwright Tony Kushner). Comparative Drama Conference. Baltimore, MD (April 2016).

“What Makes a Great American Playwright?” Panelist. The Arthur Miller Centennial Conference. St. Francis College. Brooklyn, NY (October 2015).

“Eugene O’Neill and the Unabomber.” “Hunted, Haunted, Home.” The Ninth International Conference on Eugene O’Neill, New London, CT (June 2014).

“‘Peopling His Isle with Calibans’: Eugene O’Neill’s Irish Legacy.” Eugene O’Neill Society panel. Comparative Drama Conference. Baltimore, MD (April 2013).

“‘The Irish Luck Kid’: Eugene O’Neill’s 1916 Provincetown Summer Revisited.” Norman Mailer Society Conference. Provincetown, MA (October 2012).

“Eugene O’Neill’s Exorcism: The Lost Prequel to Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” American Literature Association (ALA) 22nd Annual Conference; San Francisco, CA (May 2012).

“‘A Pleasant Game We Were Playing’: Cross-Class Marriage in the Plays of Eugene O’Neill.” Panelist, “Provincetown Marriages On and Off Stage”; 8th International Conference on Eugene O’Neill, “O’Neill in Bohemia.” New York, NY (June 2011). 

“New Directions in American Literary Naturalism.” Panelist for roundtable discussion. ALA 21st Annual Conference; Boston, MA (May 2011).

“Civilization Unmasked: Haiti and The Emperor Jones.” Panelist for “Space and Place in the Plays of Eugene O’Neill.” Modern Language Association (MLA); Los Angeles, CA (January 2011).

“Inscrutable Forces: Eugene O’Neill and the Naturalists.” O’Neill Society panel, “Intertextual Exchanges.” American Literature Association (ALA) 20th Annual Conference; San Francisco, CA (May 2010).

“Peons and Panchos: John Reed, Eugene O’Neill, and the Mexican Revolution.” Modern Language Association (MLA); San Francisco, CA (December 2008).

“‘The Screenews of War’: A Previously Unpublished Short Story by Eugene O’Neill.” American Literature Association (ALA) 18th Annual Conference; San Francisco, CA (May 2008).

“New York Stories: Lincoln Steffens, Hutchins Hapgood, and Abraham Cahan at the Daily Commercial Advertiser.” 5th Annual Hawaii International Conference on Arts & Humanities; Honolulu (Jan 2008).

“Slumming in New York: From the Waterfront to Mythic Harlem, An Introduction.” 5th Annual Hawaii International Conference on Arts & Humanities; Honolulu, Hawaii (January 2007).

“‘Leave Me Out of It’: Eugene O’Neill’s State of the Mind.” ALA Symposium on Biography; Puerto Vallarta, Mexico (December 2006).

“Teaching the Tao House Plays.” Panelist. O’Neill Foundation Festival; Danville, CA (October 2006).

“Wrestling with the Octopus: The Ethnicity Paradox in Turn-of-the-Twentieth Century U.S. Fiction.” New Directions in U.S. Ethnicity Studies ALANA Conference; U. of Vermont, Burlington, VA (June 2006).

“On Eugene O’Neill’s ‘Philosophical Anarchism.’“ ALA 17th Conf; San Francisco, CA (May 2006).

“Ethnic Realism.” Connecticut State University Faculty Research Conference; Central Connecticut State University; New Britain, CT (October 2005).

“Impenetrable Mysteries: Stephen Crane’s Bowery Tales and the Case for George’s Mother.” Stephen Crane Society panel; ALA 16th Annual Conference; Cambridge, Massachusetts (May 2005).

“Ethnic U.S. Literature in the Age of Realism.” Panel chair, panelist, and organizer; MLA; Philadelphia, PA (December 2004).

“‘Nobody’s Old Sunday-School Picnic’: Pre-Harlem Migration in Paul Dunbar’s The Sport of the Gods.” Panelist for panel “Broken Promises: The Urban Environment, Environmental Inequalities and African American Migrants, 1900-1914.” Association for the Study of African American Life and History meeting; Milwaukee, Wisconsin (September 2003).

“Immigrant Voices in American Literary Realism, 1865-1914.”  Chair and panelist for special session; Northeast Modern Language Association; Boston, Massachusetts (March 2003). 

“A Marginal Man in Black Bohemia: James Weldon Johnson in the New York Tenderloin.” Panelist for “Post-Bellum, Pre-Harlem: Rethinking African-American Literature and Culture, 1880-1914.” MLA; New York City (December 2002).

“Ernest Poole’s The Harbor and the Industrialization of U.S. Maritime Culture.” Panelist for  “Cargo: U.S. Waterfront Culture from 1911 to 9/11.” Far West Popular Culture/American Culture Association conference; Las Vegas, Nevada (February 2002).  

“Hutchins Hapgood, Victorian in the Modern World.” ALA Symposium, “Biography: Telling Lives, Telling Lies.” Puerto Vallarta, Mexico (December 2001).

“Nostalgia Nostrum: Recapturing Old New York ‘Low Life’ in the 21st Century.” American Culture Association Conference; Southern Connecticut State University; New Haven, CT (November 2001).

“Reversal of Fortunes: The Revision and Inversion by E. Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News of Frank Norris’s McTeague.” Chair and panelist for “New Historical (Re)visions.” Contemporary American Authors; ALA Symposium; Santa Fe, New Mexico (October 2001).

“A Culture of Contradictions: Stephen Crane’s Maggie and the Ideology of Victorian Respectability.” Stephen Crane Society panel; ALA 12th Annual Conference; Cambridge, Massachusetts (May 2001).

“‘Under the Bridge and Beyond’: Helen Campbell on the New York Waterfront.” New England American Studies Association Conference; University of New Hampshire, Manchester (April 2001).

“Slumming in New York City from ‘City Mysteries’ to the Formation of Greenwich Village.” ALA Symposium, “Rereading Realism and Naturalism”; Puerto Vallarta, Mexico (December 2000).

“Among the Lower Million: ‘City Mysteries’ and the Symbolic Act of Literary Slumming.” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth‑Century Studies Conference; Yale University; New Haven, CT (April 2000).

“Witnessing the Theater of the Slums: Walt Whitman, Stephen Crane, and Henry James on the Bowery.” CUNY Graduate Center English Student Association Conference; New York City (March 1999).

“‘The Greatest Lessons of Nature’: Walt Whitman, the B’hoys and G’hals of the Bowery, and the Cultural Transformation of a New York Boulevard.” The Many Cultures of Walt Whitman Conference; Rutgers University; Camden, New Jersey (October 1998).

“Stephen Crane and the Transformation of the Bowery.” Central New York Conference on Language and Literature, SUNY College at Cortland (October 1998).